He delayed it as long as he could but when he realised that he had no other option, 33-year-old Pandurang Shinde swallowed his pride and asked his relatives for a loan in June. “It is not the best feeling,” he said. “But I was running out of time.”
“I borrowed Rs 50,000 – I needed that money for the cropping season starting in June,” he said.
Crop loans are critical for the agrarian cycle and are used to fund the purchase of farm inputs – seeds, fertilisers, pesticides and so on – ahead of the cropping season. A small farmer from Vadi, a village in central Maharashtra’s Parbhani district, Shinde had applied for a crop loan in May this year, but it had not come through because he had a pending loan.
Shinde is not alone. Several farmers across Maharashtra have missed out on crop loans this kharif season, according to the data available on the website of…